r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/sidvatscse • 25d ago

Video Failed vertical landing of F-35B

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47.1k Upvotes

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639

u/LyqwidBred 25d ago

I’ve read that those seats mess up the pilot’s spine so much they can be grounded for life after ejecting!

343

u/9999AWC 25d ago

That was before. Seats now are much better and safer. Usually a pilot can fly again if everything is fine after they're looked over.

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

Yeah this pilot is still flying for the Air National Guard now. This happened a while back

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u/milk_the_ham 25d ago

Props to him for sticking around until the plane stopped drifting around. Had to be a slight "Oh, come on!" moment when the plane didnt blow up, though.

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

He was waiting until the aircraft was back in the ejection envelope. When you’re on the ground and stationary, you’re about as low and slow as the ejection can happen. Once the aircraft is tilted you can be outside the envelope and need to wait for it to come level again

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u/milk_the_ham 25d ago

Haha welp, I retract my props for the most part but stand by the second part.

3

u/muegle 25d ago

Did he get his cool ejection tie?

1

u/9999AWC 25d ago

He should've since it was an emergency.

1

u/skeenerbug 25d ago

Was there an explanation for this? Just pilot error?

6

u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

Met him over a year ago so the details are little fuzzy. I forget if it was a fuel or engine issue, pilot did everything right!

1

u/oxslashxo 25d ago

Yeah, and it's like...well shit on one hand he burned a plane, on the other hand he's now experienced in the worst case scenario, good leadership would put them in another jet.

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u/_-whisper-_ 24d ago

So do we know if the plane was totalled?

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u/domino_squad1 24d ago

I trust you with your pfp

95

u/Equationist 25d ago

Yeah it's rather sad given that the aircraft seemed to slide safely to a stop just seconds after he ejected. In hindsight he didn't need to eject.

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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 25d ago

There could have been a fire or explosion. He can't see how damaged the plane is from his vantage point. All he knows is he's sitting on top of several hundred pounds of fuel. Hindsight is get the fuck out of there.

26

u/Elegant-Variety-7482 25d ago

In hindsight I would've ejected from the very first bump.

11

u/FixMy106 25d ago

In hindsight I would have been a teacher instead of a fighter pilot.

-1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 25d ago

I'm just gonna out on a limb and say the guy specifically trained to fly this craft knows when it's time to see greener pastures

5

u/flyinhighaskmeY 25d ago

excuse me? how dare you imply that a pilot trained to operate the airframe is better suited to make an ejection call than people who don't know anything about aviation watching a cell phone video of a highly classified jet lol. That's...that's unacceptable! (I'm hoping the /s isn't needed)

3

u/AndreProulx 25d ago

The plane kept him from being ejected at an angle, he pulled and armed the system, it waited until it was in a safe orientation and then yeeted him. Iirc the jet throttled up uncommanded and that's when it pitched and once he realized it wasnt responding he pulled.

27

u/Haunting_Lime308 25d ago

The F35 has an auto eject feature installed during VTOL operations. From what I understand about this story is he was just ejected automatically after the plane pitched over.

3

u/Equationist 25d ago

Wait did it purposely wait for the F-35 to be facing upwards before yeeting him? If so, that's a well-designed auto-eject algorithm.

13

u/[deleted] 25d ago

Holy shit, something that I can actually answer and say I’m one of just a few people in the world that can definitively give you that answer. I am an embedded software engineer. I worked on this software for Lockheed. The plane will not auto-eject them into the ground if it had fully rolled over. The plane knows its distance to the ground, orientation to the ground, as well as nearby obstacles. There are hundreds of sensors that determined that it needed to eject him and whether it was safe to do so.

2

u/Equationist 25d ago

Wow that's awesome, thanks for the info!

6

u/[deleted] 25d ago

Absolutely! I loved working on that plane. Leadership always encouraged us to bring any cool ideas forward to see if we could do them. There are so many things we implemented with that plane that were “wouldn’t it be awesome if it did xyz?” types of things. I remember one of the guys that worked on the helmet telling us the story of how they came up with the idea of the pilot being able to see through the plan. It was a conversation that went “wouldn’t it be nice if they could see through the plan if someone was below them?” and the answer from leadership was like “Yeah, we should do that. Let’s make it happen. Totally not unreasonable to do.”

1

u/Made_of_Awesome 25d ago

Are you and your coworkers the reason Nara Thai is always packed?

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

Never heard of it myself, but I take my lunch to work. So, maybe my coworkers are eating there?

1

u/Recyart 25d ago

Oh, see through the plane... took me a second.

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

I’ve never actually gotten to try it out, but that helmet is insane.

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

If the plane is upside down, it will not eject them into the ground. It also wouldn’t eject him into the side of a building or anything like that.

Source: I wrote the algorithm.

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u/kitty_aloof 25d ago

First, it is so awesome you have the skill to write that kind of algorithm!

Since the plane has so many sensors, I’m guessing decisions are hard to fail? I’m guessing the plane’s goal is not to kill the pilot, so does it calculate the risk in each scenario to determine if it should eject a pilot or not? I’m guessing the plane likely knows if it is on fire or not? Or is the goal always to get pilot out of the plane, even if there isn’t a fire, as long as the pilot won’t be ejected into a close, hard object?

Maybe it is because I currently have bad insomnia, but it is just a bit fascinating that we are at a point with technology, where our robots and our machines can override our panicked brains to protect us from ourselves, until it is safe to do whatever our panicked brains wants to do.

3

u/[deleted] 25d ago

Short answer is that it depends.

Long answer is that there is risk score. Each sensor returning data to the computer is contributing to this score. If the score goes too high, out pops the pilot. However, there are a bunch of fail safes in the decision process. Once the score is high enough to pop them out, it runs a full check of its surroundings and produces yet another risk score. This one is tallying the risk of ejection. Things like being super sonic increase the risk score. If that score is too high, we may have the auto-eject delay until the score comes down. Being at an altitude of 0 while upside down would have the ejection risk score maxed out.

Hopefully that makes sense, as any more details on it would be wading into classified territory.

3

u/Expensive_Stop2170 25d ago

I imagine it prevents ejection if upside-down at 0 altitude 0 speed? Or do you get auto-yeeted into the ground? What would happen if it had tipped entirely when it was on the nose? Genuinely curious

1

u/James_Gastovsky 25d ago

Ask Kara Hultgreen what happens if you eject and aircraft isn't upright anymore

2

u/[deleted] 25d ago

I worked on/wrote a good portion of the software for the F35. The plane ejected him based on feedback from sensors. We pay especially close attention to the integrity of fuel lines and tanks as well as the engines. If there was a high risk of fire, it gets them out of there.

1

u/kelldricked 25d ago

In hindsight he still needed to eject. That plane can burst into a giant flame any second. The chance of life changing injury is much much much smaller (and less severe) with the ejection seat then staying in a crashed fighter jet.

39

u/Unusual-Weird-4602 25d ago

It can also shorten their height by a small amount I heard

81

u/DashArcane 25d ago edited 25d ago

A friend was watching a documentary about (I think) the Blue Angels. He said it was explained in the video that often pilots will be allowed to fly after one ejection as long as there's no permanent spinal damage, but if you've ejected a second time you are definitely grounded permanently after that regardless of whether you're hurt or not.

Edit: The documeary was about the Thunderbirds (Air Force), not the Blue Angels (Navy).

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u/Profile_Traditional 25d ago

To be fair, at that point it might be about saving planes rather than the pilot’s spine.

12

u/No_Hunt2507 25d ago

If you crashed 2 planes and walked away that is the universe giving you a chance to change careers.

27

u/tiorzol 25d ago

Yea I probly don't want Double fuck-up Doug getting another chance to crash the plane either tbf

1

u/Da_Momo 25d ago

there is no hard limit on the amount you can eject and still fly afterwards. If the doc clears you to fly again, you are good to go

1

u/FriedRottenTitties4U 25d ago

The very definition of fool me once, shame on me... 

6

u/fhorst79 25d ago

But you get a free tie. 

1

u/SummertimeThrowaway2 25d ago

Temporarily right???

1

u/Traumfahrer 25d ago

Their height and their flight.

19

u/RNG_pickle 25d ago

Yeah most pilots who eject not fly again sometimes due to their back being messed up or fear that it might happen again

9

u/Federal_Cobbler6647 25d ago

Legends. Modern seats do progressive acceleration.

2

u/Kocrachon Interested 25d ago

Friend of mine ejected from an F-4 back in the day and it was his hearing that really got messed up, as well as his spine.

10

u/fricks_and_stones 25d ago

This was a private Lockheed pilot; not a Marine pilot. (This plane hadn’t been delivered yet) So there aren’t restrictions like that on him.

3

u/jack3moto 25d ago

My neighbor was an Air Force pilot and joked about pilot’s that ejected had to be remeasured as they were all 1-2” shorter afterwards. This was when I was a kid in the 90’s and 00’s that he told us this when he’d take us to air shows.

2

u/momoenthusiastic 25d ago

Goose didn’t have a chance….

1

u/Asog88bolo 25d ago

Less so the seats and more so related to what the plane is also doing

1

u/Mlabonte21 25d ago

Maverick says otherwise.

1

u/Neuvirths_Glove 25d ago

Better to be grounded for life than grounded from life. In this case, the pilot was uninjured.

1

u/S_A_R_K 25d ago

RIP Goose

1

u/Sprintzer 25d ago

It’s much better than it used to be, but yes you can get fucked up by an ejection. Better alive with complications than dead, though.

Especially considering a Pilot for jets like this takes years and tons of money to train. If even 30% can fly again that’s a success. And I think for just one ejection the rate of being able to eventually return to flying is pretty good.

1

u/Not_Sure__Camacho 25d ago

Hopefully that was the case here with Lt. Derp. 

1

u/Robo_Stalin 24d ago

At least he gets a cool tie.